Hello! We are Braedon and Sidney, two farmers with more than 15 years of combined farming experience, including farm management experience. We have 11 combined years of growing organic vegetables, plus a year of orchard work and 3 years professional livestock management.
We also have both WWOOFed on multiple farms around the world, each completed a 3-month butchering apprenticeship, and Braedon has spent about 6 months making farm value-added products such as cheese, sausage, and kombucha.
We are looking to start a farm growing fruits and vegetables in a low-to-no-till technique as well as raise sheep and chickens for meat.
Water for irrigation is the only absolutely essential. But electricity, a dry storage structure for equipment, and a pre-existing green house would all be lovely to have as well.
Sidney got a degree in small-scale agriculture economics, writing her thesis on existing farm cooperatives in the NorthEast. She worked on the college farm throughout every year, and every summer spent the season working on a different nearby organic vegetable farm. After college, she completed a yearlong intensive apprenticeship on a horse-powered vegetable and livestock farm in MA, one year working at a large organic and free-range chicken farm in VT, and two years managing a large vegetable farm in VT. Following this, she moved to Oregon in 2021 to manage the crew at an organic fruit and vegetable farm in the Southern Willamette Valley for three years. She spent one winter completing a 3-month butchering program and WWOOFing on multiple farms in England before landing where she currently is, managing the peak harvest crew at a 15 acre organic vegetable farm.
Sidney has also raised her own pasture-raised and rotationally grazed sheep and chickens for sale.
Braedon began working in a vineyard and making wine for a year before spending two seasons working at a pear, apple, and cherry orchard. That farm also grew vegetables. Braedon spent the following winter as a butcher’s apprentice and then worked at an organic fruit and vegetable farm for two years. He simultaneously worked on a rotational grazing livestock farm, raising sheep, pigs, chickens and ducks. He also sells pasture raised meat at the Farmers Market. He currently works part-time making cheese and sausage at one farm and growing vegetables at another one.
We have both read many of the canon organic farming and no-till farming books.
Our short term plan for developing a farm is to grow lower investment, higher profit crops as we develop a business and improve soil fertility with sheep and chickens.
We hope to do a 1-time till with a BCS in order to make beds and then regularly apply compost, compost teas, mulch, grow cover crops, and use animals to improve soil.
We hope to make partnerships with institutions like schools, food banks, companies, or distributors to sell larger amounts and not immediately have to deal with too much cold storage, packaging, and infrastructure needs.
Our long term plans depend on the agreements we make with land owners, but we dream of planting an orchard and grazing sheep and chickens in the orchard. This feels to us like a great choice for long-term management, and sustainability (for the farm and the farmers.
We would like to continue to develop our no-till practices to improve the soil and require less inputs. The techniques we plan on using include rotational grazing of our animals on cover crops and pasture, then transitioning pasture to vegetable beds periodically. We will also use the ample foliage from our trees to mulch the beds plus create partnerships with local companies and individuals for additional mulching inputs.
We would like to invest in infrastructure as we can. We would like to build cold storage for vegetables and frozen goods like meat and berries. This infrastructure can be used for our own products as well as rented out for other like-minded farms to store goods and develop a small regional food hub. The partnerships developed from something like this could lead us to more efficiencies of scale and more consistent marketing opportunities.
We would also like to build the infrastructure to create our own value-added products like sauces, sausage, cured meats, and/ or cider as the market and our capabilities allow. We are certainly capable of doing these things but probably can’t do all of them! We plan on making the best choices as this time comes.
We would also like to hire employees and train young farmers who will continue to preserve the environment and feed our community nutritious food. We could hire for general farm hands as well as individuals interested in more specialized work like greenhouse management, kitchen processes, livestock management, or orchard work.
We are happy to live on or near the land we eventually lease and are capable of paying rent to the owner of the land or somewhere off site.
We hold respect as our highest value. Respect for people, respect for the environment and respect for all life. We will treat others with thoughtful consideration, kindness and grace.
To owners, tenants, neighbors and the community, we will meet them where they are, make no assumptions about anyone, and treat them with dignity.
To contact a land seeker, you must first create a land listing and have it approved by our staff. Thank you.
